1. Technical Field
The present invention generally relates to an apparatus, system, and method of managing data transmission, each of which is capable of determining whether to accept or reject a request for starting communication between or among a plurality of transmission terminals, and a data transmission management program stored in a non-transitory recording medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the need for reducing costs or times associated with business trips, more companies are moving towards data transmission systems provided with teleconference or videoconference (“conference”) capabilities to carry out communication among a plurality of transmission terminals. For example, the videoconference systems allow transmission of contents data such as image data and/or sound data among a plurality of videoconference terminals through a communications network such as the Internet to carry out videoconference.
When communication is managed using a management server, for example, as described in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2005-109922-A (Registration No. 4292544), the user cannot freely change the time to start or end, as the management server manages communication based on the scheduled information.
While the management server can allow the user to freely change the time to start or end the conference without requiring the user to change the scheduled information, for example, as described in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2011-199845-A, the management system may not be able to manage communication based on the scheduled information, as communication may not be based on the scheduled information. For example, the management system may start communication between a request transmission terminal and a counterpart transmission terminal in response to a request from the request transmission terminal, not based on the scheduled information. In such case, the counterpart transmission terminal, which starts communication with the request transmission terminal, may not be able to start communication with the other transmission terminal based on the scheduled information.